Chariots of Hogwarts
by SinghSong
Summary: After Charity Burbage's untimely demise, with widespread concerns that the Muggle Studies post may have been cursed by the Carrows, McGonagall finds it virtually impossible to find a qualified person willing to fill the vacancy. So she visits Japan to recruit one of her old students, Noriko Ursula, and ends up accepting several transfer students to Hogwarts as part of the deal...


PROLOGUE

"Are you absolutely sure? My dear, at least take some time to consider. Opportunities like this only come once in a lifetime! If you turn your back on this, you may regret it for the rest of your life..."

No use. The burning portal in the fireplace had already abruptly flickered and died, with Penelope Clearwater cutting off the Floo connection from her end and hanging up. Defeated, Headmistress Minerva M. McGonagall irately extinguished the fire entirely, rose from the armchair, and slowly trundled back to the far more plush and comfortable seat behind the ancient desk in the Hogwarts Headteacher's Office, sinking into it with a loud 'plomp' and sighing heavily. It had only been six weeks since the Battle of Hogwarts- she'd only been Hogwarts' Headmistress for little over a month, since Professor Flitwick had made it clear that he had no intention of vying for the position. _Merlin, he'd had far more sense than she'd had, when she'd chosen to take this responsibility on herself_...

This room, the Headteacher's Office, was one of the few rooms in the entirety of Hogwarts which hadn't required a full renovation, and which hadn't needed to be cleared of dead corpses by the clean-up crew, comprised primarily of those select few Snatchers who'd been evaluated and deemed suitable for rehabilitation. Nonetheless, it still bore the marks of the past year, and of the ugliness which had been brought to Hogwarts. Casting her eyes around the Headteacher's Office, which she still hadn't even managed to complete the task of redecorating, and still bore the scars from Severus' conversion of the room into a total eyesore- Minerva looked up at the lurid, almost neon green coving, comprised of a chain of engraved, writhing snakes, which still actively resisted her every effort to remove them by ganging up and launching themselves at anyone who tried, and shuddered in disgust- right now, she just felt like shifting into her animagus form and cutting loose, shredding up anything and everything she could get her claws on...

"Clearly, Miss Clearwater wasn't too keen on the teaching position. Can't say I didn't tell you..."

 _Speak of the devil_... Minerva turned around to face the one thing in this room which she'd felt like shredding into pulp more than any other over the course of the past month, her eyes narrowing almost to slits. "This is all your fault, Severus. ALL of this."

"Please. Don't blame me for the predicament in which you find yourself- I did everything I could. And one can't blame Miss Clearwater for not being thick..."

A cacophony of muttering burst out between the other headteachers' portraits, along with a few louder calls.

"Merlin's beard, do you have a death wish?"

"He speaks sense, this one..."

"Put this damned upstart in his place..."

"If your own frame gets torn apart, you're certainly not sharing my living space..."

"Severus, that's quite enough! Minerva is doing all she can!" The booming voice of Albus Dumbledore's portrait cut off those of all of the others- even the impudent, obnoxious portrait of Snape, who still had a satisfied smirk plastered across his face. Minerva tossed him one last feral glare before smoothing her face over, reversing the half-complete transformation and regaining her composure. "Thank you, Albus..."

"But we must redouble our efforts, and cast our nets wider. The new school year approaches, and we have a responsibility to our students which must be upheld. Now, more than ever."

"I have been trying, Albus! But not one qualified person, out of all those who I've approached thus far, can be persuaded to accept the position! Wigworthy, Alderton, Tremlett, Leach Jnr, Cattermole... So many. Clearwater was, what, the eleventh candidate on our list? No, twelfth! And still, still..."

"Hardly surprising though, is it?" Snape's portrait started up again- though quieter this time, with a hint of resignation in its voice. "The Carrows may not have been overly powerful, but they were certainly insane enough, and knew more than enough about the Dark Arts to place a curse on the teaching position. And you can't blame people for not being particularly keen to find out first-hand whether it has been cursed or not, or what their curse was."

"No. I can't."

Dumbledore's portrait frowned, adopting his expression of thunderous resolve. "But it is imperative that we manage to bring in a new Professor to teach this, and set the new curriculum as soon as possible. In this year, this field of study may be the most important of all when it comes to healing the wounds of the past few years, and restoring peace- perhaps even more so than Defence against the Dark Arts."

"I don't need you to tell me that Albus! I know how important this is. I can't just, take Muggle Studies off the curriculum, especially not now. Not when we've finally won the war..."

"Not that it would work anyway." Snape's portrait stated bluntly. "It's not like Defence against the Dark Arts, where it appears that we've managed to finally circumvent the unbreakable curse which The Deceased Lord placed on that teaching position for all eternity by eliminating it once and for all, creating this new class for the coming year, 'Jinxes and Hexes' to take its place, and shifting the responsibility for teaching many of the spells formerly on the DADA curriculum back to their rightful place, in the Charms class. The Carrows themselves swore they'd curse any 'muggle-loving filth' who even so much as dared to try and teach about them at Hogwarts again, on numerous occasions, with several witnesses. And if those claims were true, then it wouldn't matter which class we tried to teach it in."

"I wouldn't just get rid of the subject regardless." Minerva muttered to herself, waving her wand to make all of the now useless reference papers scattered across her desk fold themselves into origami birds- contemplating transfiguring them into real birds and using them for catching practice later. "I won't just take away Charity's legacy- we owe her more than that, she deserves to have a successor. There has to be, some other way. Another option, another person we've overlooked..."

"Funny you should mention that. I believe I might be able to suggest just such an option..." The sorrowful, thoughtful expression of Snape's portrait had vanished without trace, and that characteristic smarmy, arrogant smile of his had reasserted itself again with a vengeance. Minerva swore under her breath, closing her eyes for a few moment to get it out of her sight, and attempt to clear away the migraine he was giving her.

"Fine. Well, Severus? Perhaps you'd care to explain what that option actually is, instead of just standing there with that smug grin on your face?"

"Very well. But first, you have to say 'please'."

"No, I don't. First, I just have to say 'Incendio', and burn your portrait to kingdom come..."

"Alright, alright! You've made your point, Minerva- no need to be so catty. As you're well aware, I was perhaps The Deceased Lord's most sane, rational, intelligent and diplomatic Death Eater..."

"Which isn't saying much..." muttered Minerva under her breath.

"...and as such, he often ordered me to go abroad to conduct recruiting missions, and expand the Death Eaters by establishing links and scouting potential members in other nations across the globe. Naturally, I was very successful. I made many connections, and met many- remarkable, talented individuals."

"Wait. Are you saying- you can't SERIOUSLY be proposing this? Bringing in one of THEM...?!"

"No, no. Lord no. I can't think of a single one who'd have been an improvement- had I been able to, I would have recruited them to the Death Eaters last year, and hired that person to teach the subject last year instead of the Carrows. But I met several arguably more remarkable and equally talented individuals who opposed them, no matter what. And among them was one individual who actually attended Hogwarts at around the same time that I did- a passing acquaintance of Lily Evans, albeit some four years younger than either of us, by the name of Noriko Ursula."

The eyes of Dumbledore's portrait widened in recognition, and a beam spread across his face. "Ah, of course! Miss Ursula- how could that girl have slipped my mind...?"

Minerva scowled, looking from one portrait to the other for a moment or two. "I can't say I can recall who you're talking about, though the surname does ring a bell. Care to fill me in?" Grinning broadly now, seizing the opportunity to tout his knowledge for all it was worth, Snape's portrait adopted his teaching voice, and enthusiastically launched into his lecture with some gusto.

"Miss Noriko Ursula had a idea, albeit seemingly rather radical and far-fetched, to try and increase both the acceptance of muggle-borns in the magical world and the acceptance of magic in the muggle world. Of course, being the hard-liners that they were, neither Harold Minchum nor Millicent Bagnold refused to even entertain implementing such a scheme. So Miss Ursula used her own deceased family's funds to emigrate back to her native Japan, and put it into practice there. Effectively, she adopted a secret identity, taking on the stage name of 'Shiny Chariot'- which I believe was the originally planned name for the grander project she'd proposed here in the United Kingdom- and became a muggle-style magical performer, putting on highly publicised shows of magic for muggle audiences across Japan. She faced widespread scorn, and aroused a great deal of hostility in Japan's wizarding circles by doing so, making herself the target of a fair few serious assassination attempts. A few individuals from a couple of the darker pureblood families in Japan even told me that if I assassinated her myself, and succeeded where their clans' ninjas and kunoichis had failed, they'd pledge their eternal allegiance to His Lordly Darkness on the spot. But she survived each attempt virtually unscathed, and the extra publicity generated by these mysterious and seemingly inexplicable attempts on her life soon resulted in her rising to her current celebrity status, as perhaps the most famous living 'Magician' in the muggle world."

Minerva blinked, trying to take all of this in. "Well, that's very impressive indeed! To survive all those attacks- How powerful must she be? Surely I'd have remembered a student like that, that recently?"

Severus' portrait snickered. "So far as I remember, not particularly powerful at all. Certainly not as powerful as Lily had been, at her age- although, to be fair, some people do bloom later than others, so I can't really tell you how powerful she may be nowadays. But none of them knew who she actually was, you see. I knew, since I'd gone to school with her- I'd heard her discussing an early draft of her grand plan to Lily back in the day, I heard all about her original proposal to Minchum from my sources in the Ministry, and as soon as I heard about the mystery witch mesmerising the muggle masses with her performances over in Japan, I knew it could only be her. And after I knew, I went back through her academic records. You wouldn't remember her terribly well- you never allowed her advance to N.E.W.T level in Transfiguration, after she missed out on getting an 'E' grade in her O.W.L by a single point. Tragic..."

"Ah. I see..." McGonagall cast her mind back to the closest near-misses she'd had over the years. Come to think of it, she did vaguely recall having taught a decently talented young Japanese Hufflepuff witch, back in her O.W.L's class in 1980. But it had been a tough year; she hadn't wanted to fail a few of the Gryffindors in that year whose parents had been fighting and dying for the Order against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and she'd had to mark a few of the other students a bit more harshly to compensate... The Headmistress shifted uncomfortably in her seat, feeling more than a little bit guilty about her past conduct.

"...But she was something of a Charms prodigy, getting an impressively high 'O' in that subject at NEWT level. If you asked Flitwick, he'd definitely remember her. And in Muggle Studies, of course- I wouldn't be suggesting her if she hadn't. You know how much of an expert I am at seeing through illusions- but the combination of disillusionment spells, glamour charms, runic protections and subtle wards she'd utilized to conceal her true appearance was beyond even me. It's believed that it's thanks to her publicity efforts, and the resulting increase in the magical awareness of muggle-born children in Japan, that the number of young muggle-born wizards and witches in Japan has almost doubled over the past fifteen years or so, even as the Japanese muggle population has gone into decline. But in the past few years, as Japanese pureblood radicals became increasingly willing to attack her events and the muggles who attended them, she stopped doing her stage tours; Miss Ursula resurfaced again, appearing out of nowhere, and she accepted a position on the teaching staff at the girls' academy of the Mahōtokurō, only last year. I believe she's still only an assistant though, only permitted to teach extra-curricular classes like Flying and Xylomancy, so..."

Minerva raised her hand for silence- and raised an eyebrow in disbelief as Snape's portrait actually noticed the gesture and obeyed her request. "Severus. Why would she accept though, any more than any of the others. You said it yourself- she wanted a refuge from danger, a peaceful working environment. If she already has a teaching position at one of the most prestigious Magical Schools in the world, one which hasn't just been torn apart by bloody civil war, why would she want to leave there, for here? Why would she give that up, for this?"

"Because it is her dream. You see, after Professor Burbage's- untimely demise, I took it upon myself to clear out her office, taking anything of sentimental value before the Carrows could arrive to vandalise the place. A prominently displayed photograph of Noriko Ursula was one of the most memorable items I came across- and folded away in its frame, I later found a letter from Miss Ursula to Professor Burbage, seemingly written on the day of her graduation, in which Noriko thanked Charity Burbage profusely for her tutelage, and stated that she aspired to emulate her some day, and return to Hogwarts to teach Muggle Studies as her successor."

Professor McGonagall rose from her seat, summoning her travelling cloak and bottomless handbag from their respective drawers in the desk. "Alright, Snape. I think I've heard quite enough to make up my mind. I can't believe I'm doing this, but..." With a faint smile, Minerva turned back to face the portrait of her brief predecessor. £Thank you, Severus. Well then. I'd best be on my way then, shouldn't I...?"


End file.
